DESCRIPTION:
A veil barely seen. Performed by Cynthia Fogg, viola, on the 20th Annual Ussachevsky Festival, February 2012

Composed in 2001, this piece was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, violist Liuh-Wen Ting. It was premiered in New York in April of 2001, at Merkin Hall.
Ms. Ting commissioned A veil barely seen to be one of five pieces that would each represent one of the five Chinese elements (earth, air, fire, water, and wood). A veil barely seen represents water. Its electronic part consists primarily of the recorded sound of water, which is sometimes colored by filtering, and from which lingering tones arise and decay. In the viola part, single notes and melodic fragments emerge from the tape sounds, with many subtle variations in tone color, vibrato or lack thereof, and dynamics.
Ms. Ting performs A veil barely seen on my CD Centre Bridge from Mode Records Site for A veil barely seen at the AMC Online Library (includes audio and an excerpt of the score)

Chapter 6 of the Tao Te Ching is about the Valley Spirit, an eternal female element associated with water. In a poetic translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, she is compared to "a veil barely seen". I recorded the sound of water for this piece in the winter and early spring of 2000. Listening to the different streams, I felt myself pulled in by the sound. The water flows between, around, and through the rocks, and as it does, it produces different pitches and rhythms. They change in subtle ways, depending on where you stand. The longer I listened, the more I began to hear. But sometimes, I could not tell whether the pitches that I heard were really there, or were only sounding in my imagination. Finally, I felt myself disappearing into the water. A veil barely seen was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, Liuh-Wen Ting.
- Frances White

Frances White composes instrumental and electronic music. She studied with Lawrence Moss, Charles Dodge, and Paul Lansky. She has received honors, awards, and commissions from organizations such as Prix Ars Electronica, the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, the International Computer Music Association, Hungarian Radio, ASCAP, the Bang on a Can Festival, the Other Minds Festival, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Ms. White's music can be heard on CD on the Wergo, Centaur, Nonsequitur, One World, and Harmonia Mundi labels. Ms. White studies shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute), and finds that the traditional music of this instrument informs and influences her work as a composer. Much of Ms. White's music is inspired by her love of nature, and her electronic works frequently feature natural sounds recorded around where she lives, in central New Jersey.